Diana 41

Diana turns 41 today, but we did the more formal celebrating yesterday.

I have a hard time buying gifts. Last year I ended up buying her a MacBook Pro, but this year I obviously couldn't be that ridiculous. So I got her a Kindle, which she had been talking about for awhile. What really sold her was the idea of "borrowing" books from the library, but they recently allowed "loaning" books between people, so that seemed like a step in the right direction. I figured that once they really can do it, copyright holders and all, that's a software update, so why wait?

I have to say that I'm impressed with it myself. I got her the 3G version, because if she does subscribe to content or wants something on vacation or whatever, I don't want to be Wi-Fi dependent. Finding free Wi-Fi still isn't always easy. The thing is so inexpensive now that it just made a lot of sense. As much as I prefer the idea of a device that does a lot more, like an iPad, it's pretty hard to beat the "electronic ink" of the Kindle. It's as readable as laser printing on good paper.

For dinner, we went to a little Italian place in Bellevue. It was... OK. The service was remarkably average, and the food wasn't priced according to its actual value. Except for the chocolate truffle mousse I had for dessert. That was crazy delicious. I'm really convinced that people out here think paying more for food means it's better, because we sure have gone to a lot of restaurants here that weren't as good as the pricing would imply, and yet the places all manage to stay open. So far, we've only had one restaurant (out of dozens) that was a hit, that we've gone back to.

Uncle Joe watched Simon while we went out for dinner, which I'm very grateful for. He's so good with Simon. It wasn't intentional, but I'm glad we moved closer to them, especially so Simon gets to spend time with his cousins.

Today, the actual birthday, was far more laid back. I got up with the boy, and we spent some nice quiet time together. He was a little crabby, I think because he was constipated, but he "got the poops out," as Diana's little techno song goes. (She made up a song for him, and usually involves standing up and/or getting his legs up in the air to help.) I tell one of my friends at work, who is expecting, that his life is gonna be about poop quite a bit, and he should get used to it.

I spent a lot of time with Simon today, which was good. It's another weekend where I didn't really do anything I set out to do, but it's worth it when I can spend quality time with Simon and Diana. It seems like he's doing new things every day, and I don't want to miss any of it. He's getting close to popping up into proper crawling position, he's on the edge of saying actual words, he's getting more stable standing up against stuff, and his fine motor skills are getting more and more precise. It's absolutely amazing.

Diana got to do some cooking for herself, composing a new salmon dish. I don't care for seafood (it's mostly the smell), but it did look appetizing. She's an excellent cook. We still got pizza for dinner though. It's all about relaxing.

I capped off tonight helping out with Simon, who did not want to sleep. While I'm generally inclined to believe it's the teething making him miserable, I'm starting to wonder if he's having an extreme growth spurt and is really just hungry. I hate to get it wrong, because I don't want to medicate him if he's not hurting. However, while the molars are finally near the end of their journey, he's popping eye-teeth now. He's going to have all of his baby teeth before he's 1-year-old at this rate!

Naturally, birthdays make you nostalgic, and we talked a lot about how nuts it is that this is our life. Having Simon is a lot of work at times, especially for Diana, but what a joy it is being his parents. We might have got a late start, but we're lucky to have him. We have so many adventures to look forward to with him!